I will pretty well always pick up a book about found family, and I was attracted by the cheery cover image on this one, too. My second-to-last NetGalley read of the month and I’m on the last one, so I’ve done well!
Alex Summers – “The Stand-in Dad”
(18 February 2025, NetGalley).
We open the book with Meg crying in the rain, wanting comfort, a hug from her girlfriend, a cuppa and a biscuit, but we don’t find out why she’s in this position immediately – the scene crops up again in its place in the plot, a nicely done point. Meg and Hannah have been together for ten years and are getting married. They’ve just moved back to Meg’s home town for sensible reasons, but Meg’s parents aren’t being very welcoming. In another teary scene, Meg’s sat on a bench outside David’s flower shop (Savage Lilies!) weeping because they haven’t turned up for the appointment there. He takes Meg under his wing, and ends up offering to attend her wedding planning meetings with her, suggesting some as he also creates a network of queer and ally businesses in the area.
Everyone’s lovely, but David’s partner Mark starts to think that David’s giving too much of himself, while battling with the shop not doing so well, and Meg’s still upset her parents aren’t involved. Some sweet teens from the youth club hang around the periphery, giving some lovely scenes, and also helping the plot along. When things threaten to go horribly wrong, David and Meg’s new friendship is stretched and everything looks like it can’t be saved … but it’s a positive book about community in the end. Side characters are nicely drawn, from Meg’s old “boyfriend” Gus to various cake and other makers, and solutions to difficult situations are considered and modelled. A really lovely, positive read, very well done.
Thank you to Avon Books for approving me to read this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “The Stand-in Dad” was published on 24 April 2025.
I’d been doing quite well for a while but in the triumverate of reading / writing reviews / reading blog posts, I’m only keeping up with the reading at the moment! So here are two lovely light reads courtesy of NetGalley, both featuring a sunny/miserable pair, and I’m sure you’ll all see this in the morning!
Emily Henry – “Great Big Beautiful Life”
(NetGalley, 15 February 2025)
I’ve enjoyed a good few Emily Henry novels and in this one I felt she really upped her game by effectively including a whole second storyline. Alice is a celebrity journalist who’s won the chance to pitch for writing reclusive heiress Margaret’s story. But what’s this, a Pulitzer-prize winning Proper Biographer is in the running, too? Alice breaks down Hayden’s reserve and the sparks fly in all sorts of ways, and there’s another running theme with both writers having families they don’t quite fit into, but what’s interesting is that Henry works in how Alice decides she’ll write the book, looking at media speculation then the real story for a number of episodes, as a major section of the book. What I really loved is how right she gets it around celebrity ghost-writing, from the trying to get to the truth to interviewing someone with background noise knowing it’s going to be hard to transcribe (Alice does all her own transcribing and it takes time, which is also accurate!). Other details are covered nicely, from diner descriptions to what happens when a storm comes in. It all gets quite racy in parts but it’s a good read and well done, and Henry’s work only seems to be increasing in depth and complexity.
Thank you to Penguin for offering me a copy of this book to read via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “Great Big Beautiful Life” was published on 24 April 2025.
Jane Linfoot – “The Cosy Croissant Cafe”
(NetGalley, 18 February 2025)
Well, there is NO CAFE in this book, and the living quarters and shops featured are not exactly cosy, but there are many croissants and it is an enjoyable read. We’re in St Aiden, the small Cornish town Linfoot has set many books by now, and although it’s a standalone read, I suspect readers who’ve read at least a few of the other books will appreciate the cameos from characters from those. Betty loses her home at an animal rescue and moves in to her sister and brother-in-law’s immaculate holiday cottage in St Aiden, complete with her eccentric clothes and the rescue pony, Pumpkin. But what’s this? Her brother-in-law has already let his friend Miles stay there?
Miles is buttoned up, Betty has millions of buttons flying free as she leaps around, writing in the sand and doing her freelance journalism, and they clash over keeping the cottage nice. But Betty has commitment issues and panics when she tries to sign up to rent a live/workspace in the town, and soon there’s another reason they both have to cling onto possession of the cottage. I do agree with other reviewers that the turnaround is quite quick and the relationship jumps forward after only minimal issues where you’d expect more, but I enjoyed the details of Miles’ baking, the bored 60-somethings of the town and exactly how they source items to sell in the shop they set up together. An ideal holiday read.
Thank you to One More Chapter for approving me to read this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “The Cosy Croissant Cafe” was also published on 24 April 2025
I’ve been busily clearing bigger books off my shelves while I’ve had some down time between work projects, and decided to read these art books relatively close to one another. Of course, they both fall into my 2024 TBR project (see my terrible Maths Fail at the end!). I bought “Life Between Islands”, the catalogue for an exhibition I missed, after watching a Lenny Henry TV series, “Caribbean Britain” and I’m pleased to say I’ve now read or DNS’d all the books I acquired in August 2022! “The Story of Art Without Men” was a birthday present from Meg: I have now read all my 2023 birthday books AND I’ve read all the print books I acquired in January 2023 as a whole! These two books do enter into dialogue with each other, and I think the quote I’ve chosen below covers both of them beautifully. There is discussion of a group of influential Black women artists in Hessel’s work and the same picture, Lisa Brice’s “After Ophelia”, appears in both volumes, so it was a lovely idea to read them one after the other.
Artists pinpoint moments of history through a uniquely expressive medium and allow us to make sense of a time. If we aren’t seeing art by a wide range of people, we aren’t really seeing society, history or culture as a whole … ” (A History of Art Without Men, p. 11)
Alex Farquharson and David A. Bailey (eds) – “Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s – Now”
(27 July 2022, online book retailer)
The catalogue of what must have been a wonderful exhibition at Tate Britain, this has a good number of solid articles as well as images of the pictures included in the exhibition. The Foreword, by Alex Farquharson, grapples with the fact that the Tates who founded the gallery made their fortunes through slavery in the sugar trade and the fact that Caribbean histories are much less well-known in Britain than vice versa. It also explains the title: it derives from Stuart Hall’s memoir “Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands” (which I read a little while ago) because of the dialogue and movement between the two locations and alsl to recognise Hall’s support of his artist contemporaries. The Foreword also identifies the four waves of artists that the exhibition and catalogue are organised into: the Windrush era, the Caribbean dimention of the 1980s Black Art Movement, artists who emerged around the turn of the millenium, and a new wave of recently emerged artists. The exhibition included some artists not of Caribbean heritage if their work addressed Caribbean themes significantly.
The following essays centre on various themes, including Hall and Modernism and a very interesting one by Allison Thompson on “Masquerade and Marches, Resistance and Revolution” which examines some brilliant works portraying Carnival around the world and other traditional festivals.
The art works are beautifully portrayed, interspersed with pages of text explaining various themes and subjects, and they include film stills and photographs as well as sculpture and painted art. I was particularly pleased to spot Birmingham’s Vanley Burke included with a number of photographs.
Katy Hessel – “The Story of Art Without Men”
(22 January 2023, from Meg) In the Introduction to this fascinating and much-needed book, Katy Hessel shares how she wanted into an art fair and realised not a single artwork in front of her was by a woman. Having studied painter Alice Neel and finding out how unrecognised she was, she got thinking, and set up the @thegreatwomenartists Instagram feed and even a podcast, and all that turned into this book.
Hessel divides her women artists into five parts, each containing several chapters, starting with Paving the Way which takes us from the first Renaissance women artists up to the mid 19th century then covering modern art, postwar art, the era of feminism and current artists, ending with longer portraits of three British women artists working now. Within each chapter we find smaller headings, too, as we roam around the world looking at woman and some non-binary artists. We see them trying to break free from having men (who might be God: cf artistic nuns) looking after their interests all the way through, often ignored if they had an artist father or husband but revealed in their proper light by the book. They achieve firsts: the first artist (male or female) to paint a self-portrait at an easel (Caterina van Hemessen); the first depiction of a Black sitter in a Western European miniature portrait (Giovanna Garzoni).
For reasons of space, each main artist mentions gets a paragraph or two and one or two images, carefully tied in to the text, with some additional women mentioned. Some pop up in various places. Almost every page has its vibrant reproduction although some of them do come up quite small. Crucially, women from cultures and lands around the world get a look-in, and textile arts as well as photography, pottery, metalwork and paper art are placed in their rightful position as worthy of inspection and celebration. The book ends with a “Where Are We Now?” section looking at improvements in representation but the need to keep pushing for it, which again chimes with both books. At the very end is an author interview and an interview between her and Ali Smith which were a bonus Waterstones exclusive.
These were Books 111 and 112 in my 2024 TBR project, 29 to go! Except I’ve just counted (less than one shelf now!) and there are 30 to go. Hm.
Because I had so many NetGalley books to read published in April, and because I didn’t think my subscribers would want to read a post a day for a month (maybe you’d prefer that? Let me know!) I’ve had to group my reviews into chunks. I’ve tried to choose books to review together that vaguely relate to one another, so here are two about the positive power of nature, whether that be in the mountains or in your more ordinary city.
Melissa Arnot Reid – “Enough”
(1 March 2025, NetGalley)
The Tibetans believe that a goddess lives inisde of every mountain. The one inside of Everest is called Myosangmalangma, and she is extraordinary […] She is different from the goddess that they believe resides in K2, Takar Dolsangma. That goddess is angry and has the taste for human flesh, which she will take to satiate her hunger. But not Myosangmalangma. If she takes a life, it is not for hunger, it is to teach you somtthing. I wonder if I will learn the lesson she is offering. I wonder if I even can.
I was offered this book by the publisher’s PR people as I’ve read and reviewed a few others of their books, and knew it was about more than mountaineering but more about escaping a difficult childhood and surviving in a very male world. Then the reviews made me think it was very little about climbing and a lot about her traumatic childhood, which worried me; however, lovely Wendy from Taking The Long Way Home shared that she was also reading it and it WAS about mountaineering. So with her reassurance in hand, I turned to the book gladly.
So, yes, there is a fair bit about the difficult childhood, but it takes up the right amount of the book, in my opinion, and is not gratuitous. Reid is also looking back after a lot of therapy and working through stuff, so you see it through that lens, with much understanding of herself and her family dynamics. Fairly soon, she discovers mountaineering, and the mountains are what keeps her going while she, as she admits, uses relationships with men as stepping stones to achieve more in her career or the security on which to base her climbing activities.
I have read a lot of mountain and adventure books but I haven’t read any Everest books by women as far as I know (a few Polar ones), and it was fascinating to get that perspective (and of course depressing, as the expected attitudes and behaviours from male climbers and clients of her guiding come up).
We work through seasons of Everest climbs (which never pale) and attempts to do it without oxygen, a few treasured companions who are brotherly rather than competitive or exploitative welcomed. Her attitude to accidents that befall her friends are subtly different from those of the men I’ve read books by. It’s also notable that she supports the Sherpas as they support her, and she has set up a nonprofit organisation to support the families of Indigenous guides lost in accidents in the Himalayas.
In the end, redemption comes through the mountain and a spiritual encounter in a temple, and she clearly works hard on herself and builds a life she’s finally proud of.
Thank you to Penguin Random House for offering this book to me to read via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “Enough” was published on 1 April.
Chris Fitch – “Wild Cities”
(10 April 2025, NetGalley)
This whole project started because I wanted more ecological experiences in city living, and believed that there could be much more than what I saw around me. After all the research, all the travel, interviews and experiences, I have to say … I was right. From urban forests, green corridors, wildflower meadows, wildlife and marine reserves, to the renaturalisation of river channels, space for natural mobility, foraging, stargazing, and natural burials in the city, it’s all possible.
In this wonderful book, Chris Fitch, starting with the premise that it’s natural for us to spend time in nature and seeing green trees, “a conversation in your native language. Light and easy …,” and unnatural and harmful to experience “a nature-deficient life,” tours cities of the world which have undertaken various ecological projects, from green walls in Singapore to trafficless roundabouts in Barcelona and a huge urban park in Kenya … oh, yes, and to graveyards in Paris.
Each chapter is themed around an issue, so the presence of greenery as a balm and calm to city residents, insects, trees, water and its creatures, birds, mammals, and what we do with the dead. In each city he meets a range of activists, pithily described and warmly discussed, and also shares the research, very well annotated and footnoted (28% of the book is made up of the notes). There is even a description at the end about how London became the first National Park City, with its own rangers and overarching organisational structure.
Although the chapters are on separate topics, bringing in extra cities to the main one under study, Fitch draws out some common themes in the Epilogue: a focus on biodiversity, on protected spaces and on maintaining high-quality connectivity between them (through green corridors and bridges over motorways, etc.). Another is optimism, which shines through this book – even though shifting baselines are a problem and we might never get back to what we once had, all the initiatives he looks at are based on optimism that something can be done and will be able to offer city-dwellers and nature some kind of positive experience.
I really think this is the kind of book that people who say they don’t enjoy non-fiction would enjoy, as it’s really engaging, not at all dry and full of people and experiences as well as facts and research.
Thank you to William Collins for approving me to read this book in return for an honest review. “Wild Cities” was published on 2 April 2025.
This week is Kaggsy and Stuck-in-a-Book‘s 1952 Club – every six months, they choose a year and lots of people read books published that year. They announce the next Year at the end of the previous one, so there’s plenty of time to locate good stuff to read. Now, I do try to only do book challenges from my TBR, but somehow I had NOTHING on all four shelves for the right year. Knowing that Dean Street Press have republished long strings of mysteries by E. R. Punshon and Christopher Bush, I was fairly sure I’d find one, and I chose Christopher Bush’s 41st Ludovic Travers novel (he actually published two in 1952!). From past experience, I got this finished yesterday so I could review it today rather than assuming I’d cram reading and reviewing into the week itself …
Christopher Bush – “The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel”
(1 April 2025, Kindle book)
Too hard for you? Well, maybe it is, but it’ll do you no harm to try to think it out.
It’s quite hard, actually, to review crime novels, isn’t it, as even if they have a charming detective, as here, they are all about the plot: this does have an intriguing opening – a man visits the private detective agency in which Ludovic Travers has a major stake, with the story of how a man saved his life during the War and he’s now realised he wants to track him down – with only a name, a town, and a vague memory of a second name. Travers is intrigued himself and decides to take this on himself; he forms an attachment to Henry Clandon, who works for a publisher, and is soon buzzing around London and its outskirts trying to track down this mysterious man. Soon there’s more to investigate, and he calls upon George Wharton at the Yard to help him – they work in tandem but appear to be somewhat of a pair of frenemies, getting in a bit of oneupmanship on spotting clues (I would like to read this series from the start to find out how this relationship happened).
I love the atmosphere of the book, very 1950s with its serviced flats and little cars, with the commuter belt and its pretensions also playing a part, and the War useful in wiping out memories. The theatre strand is attractive, too. The book is enhanced by both Travers’ asides to the reader and the excellent introduction putting Bush into his context by crime fiction expert, Curtis Evans.
You can read more about this book and Dean Street Press starting here.
I’ve been interested in settler colonialism (the practice of people travelling to so-called “empty” lands and taking control of them, either directly or through unbalanced “treaties”, think of Australia, Canada and the United States) for a while, and find it useful and interesting to read about the experiences of people who realise their family has been implicated in colonialism in general and slave-owning in particular, such as Thomas Harding’s “White Debt”. So when the publisher got in touch with me to see if I was interested in reading this book, I was attracted by this tale of a woman realising her quiet and fairly insignificant family still held the responsibility for taking land from Indigenous American people and indeed also finding out one of her ancestors owned people.
Hilary Giovale – “Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair”
(11 March 2025, from the publisher)
“This book is not a claim that I’ve got it all figured out. I am just an imperfect human being who is dedicated to a process of relationality, respect, healing, and personal reparations, one step at a time. I wrote this book as an act of love. You are invited to join this adventure in the ways that call to your heart.” (p. xxvi)
Married into a well-off and philanthropic family, Giovale started to work on discovering her place in the world, how to redistribute money (and attention and care) fairly, and how to make reparations and apologies to those her family had damaged, in her case Indigenous and Black people in North America.
This has global implications, of course. People are currently struggling with these issues in Australia and New Zealand and Canada, too. Giovale takes a particular approach to it which involves a lot of spiritual work and practices which might seem a bit strange at first, but it’s worth bearing with her and going along with the flow. She also shares practical examples and advice, for example on how best to engage in cross-cultural learning without imposing emotional labour on others or organisations to support, with links (there is a website with up-to-date information). There is also history of what happened to Indigenous people in North America – including some things I didn’t know, such as the fact that forced removal of children to “boarding schools” was imposed there as well as in Canada and Australia. She makes some interesting points about how Indigenous organising is different to Eurocentric organising, more centred on matriarchs and circling back round a lot more, which was very interesting.
Giovale is at pains to not centre herself (quite hard in a book of memoir and her own journey), sharing processes anyone can do and making sure she amplifies particularly Indigenous voices, sharing quotations, links and organisations, but ensuring she doesn’t share too much of the ceremonies she is clearly honoured to be invited to take part in. She includes a Foreword by West African Diaspora Elder Yeye Luisah Teish and Closing Words by Lyla June Johnston, PhD, an Indigenous musician, scholar and community organiser. She does dream work and ancestor work. As part of this, she discovers her ancestry to be Celtic – Scottish and Irish – and explores what that means in terms of people and their ancient rituals, as well as working out that the Scandinavian parts of her heritage would have overcome the Celtic ones just as they then imposed themselves on the North American landscape and peoples. This is not an excuse for their actions, just a coming to an understanding that people have colonised other people since time began. She also takes us through the processes of blame, shame, vulnerability and reparation, not necessarily monetary. There is no pressure in the book to do what she has done: Giovale shares her practices and learning journey and encourages readers to do what they feel inspired to do. Even if you don’t go into dream practices and fasting in the desert, it’s worth having a think about the underlying issues and ways of reparation that she shares.
I did feel a bit sceptical about all of this, thinking it was handy that she had all the Celtic myth, storytelling, ritual and history to involve herself in; what about people like me who are just English and have no exciting stuff like that to access? I also of course, like we do, like to think of my ancestors as simple people, actual peasant folk on one line, nothing to do with settler colonialism or slave-owning, etc. But the book made me think and ponder. I’m known to be very keen on my Spanish heritage (my gran’s grandfather was Spanish) and make a thing about how I feel terribly at home in the Tunisian city of Kairouan (I’ve been there twice now), and how I get mistaken for a Spanish person in Spain and have been told I have an Arabic appearance in Tunisia, so of course I do have other ancestors and the Arabic incursion into Spain was naturally not a jolly peaceful jaunt. So there’s that. And although my ancestors are mainly villagers and I’ve looked up that slave-owner database and not found relatives I know of, that doesn’t mean that no one was implicated in slave-owning at a distance or other nefarious things. For a start, there are people with my maiden name in the New World, which usually means something around ownership, sexual assault and renaming of children, etc. So none of us are probably free of these associations and it’s worth considering that in our lives or just having a think.
As well as incorporating many spiritual practices and examples of practical work people can do, it’s really well-referenced. It’s worth noting that proceeds from the sales of the book are going to the Decolonizing Wealth Project and Jubilee Justice., both organisations which are involved in reparative justice and the moving of funds to support Black, Indigenous and other Global Majority People communities.
You can read more reviews by people in closer proximity to the issues raised here on the book’s web page here. The book is published by Green Writers Press, an independent publisher in Vermont.
Two stories of second-generation immigrant (well, sort of, as both emigrate themselves, one before she’s born, the other aged about 12) East Asian women, one a novel, one a memoir, one about a Vietnamese family in the UK, the other about a Hong Kong Chinese family in Australia. They’re both from NetGalley, and I had so many books from there published this month I felt I should group them: I have tried to pair at least similar books!
Tuyền Đỗ – “Summer Rolls”
(22 Jan 2025, NetGalley)
Trinh couldn’t perform miracles. She could not lead the blind to see. This sort of self-imposed blindness was a symptom of the West, and she was not going to be painted as the villain her daughter saw her as. ‘You think I am difficult. I am not. I gave you freedom because I am forward-thinking. I know the mind needs it. But you have to know that I have been on this earth much longer than you. I know things you can’t know yet.
Mai is navigating second-generation immigrant life in 1990s London, with yet another of those harsh mums who expects her to behave and do her best for the family. She meets a kind boy as she tries to fit in, but she can never take him home, and what good is wanting to be a photographer as a career when there’s family entrepreneurial stuff to do? Mum Trinh was young and rebellious once, too, but also had some really hard times through the conflicts in Vietnam – I was actually torn between being glad these experiences are honoured and worrying about people being traumatised revisiting their history, although it is quite clear that there are dual narratives in the book.
Trinh has to cope with first migrating across her own country, then sending her son away to goodness knows what, then coming to London herself, so it’s no wonder she’s the tough centre of the household while her husband is plagued by PTSD from being in the army. Once again, although we are invited to respect and support Trinh, I felt more on her side than her pretty ungrateful daughter – is this because I’m older now and can see what these women in these books (and the real-life ones they’re based on) have been through more clearly?
I really liked that there was lots of Vietnamese language which wasn’t translated but was cleverly worked into the text so you understood what it meant, as well as having a basic family member vocab at the beginning. A very decent first novel with interesting things to learn.
Thank you to Trapeze for selecting me to read this book in return for an honest review. “Summer Rolls” is published on 24 April 2025
Candice Chung – “Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You: A Memoir of Saying the Unsayable With Food”
(6 March 2025, NetGalley)
In solitude, it is as if all of her appetite for pleasure is suspended, her desires fused with a full home – a light flicked on only for us.
This was a bit of an odd one. The book is described as “… she’s determined to tackle what’s left unsaid. To find a way to unscramble what her family has been trying to tell each other all along – not in Cantonese or English, but with food,” and we are told she takes her parents to review restaurants with her for her job, which implies it’s a family memoir, but actually it’s more an emotional and relationship memoir around Chung herself. There is a fair bit about their move from Hong Kong to Australia and what it’s like living in Australia as a Chinese woman, but a lot of it is working through the minutiae of her current relationship while also discussing her previous 13-year one which coincided with a period where she didn’t see her parents – but as far as I could see, there is no explanation as to why that is, and she has made contact with them and introduces the new guy to them. I was aware of this emphasis from other reviews so it wasn’t a surprise, and I did read through it quite happily.
Once more, I found myself sympathising with her mum, obviously experiencing culture shock and doing her best; to be fair, she is described positively and lovingly and the portrait of her isn’t as harsh as some portrayals of Chinese mothers. And an interesting background being based in Australia.
Thank you to Elliott & Thompson for approving me to read this book in return for an honest review. “Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You” is also published on 24 April 2025
I have actually read “Finn Family Moomintroll” before, last year, in honour of Book Jotter’s wedding, but it’s come to that point in my readalong with Kaggsysbookishramblings and I thought it would be interesting to read it in the context of doing the whole lot. If you are reading along with us, please add a link to your review in the comments!
Tove Jansson (trans. Elizabeth Portch) – “Finn Family Moomintroll”
(8 January 2025)
They had had many strange adventures on this river and had brought home many new friends. Moomintroll’s mother and father always welcomed all their friend in the same quiet way, just adding another bed and putting another leaf in the dining room table. And so Moominhouse was rather full – a place where everyone did what they liked and sledome worried about tomorrow. Very often unexpected and disturbing things used to happen, but nobody ever had time to be bored, and that is always a good thing. (p. 7)
This is touted as being a good one to start with, as indeed I did, but actually I was bewildered by the range of characters that time and have been enjoying meeting them more gradually (also: why did I think the Snork Maiden was Moomintroll’s sister when it’s pretty clear she isn’t?). This book opens oddly, with everyone going to sleep for the winter, although that also makes it feel it’s part of a longer narrative cycle, which of course it is. The text then is episodic, almost like a set of interlinked short stories, linked by the cheeky work of the Hobgoblin’s Hat, which transforms whatever is left in it, whether that’s water, cherries or Moomintroll himself!
There is a feeling of worry and the lingering issue of refugees migrating across continents is still there, with the Hattifatteners sweeping across the world and two little creatures with their own language turning up at the door. But always there is Moominmamma with her capacious handbag and her infinite capacity to take people in. I’m becoming more and more fond of her, although Moomintroll and Snufkin’s friendship is also beautifully portrayed here.
A more rewarding read the second time around.
Here’s Kaggsy‘s review. And Lizzy Sidall joined us for this one again, too!
To start with, a very exciting Three Investigators thing: inspired by me writing about them, German blogger Cat’s Wire has blogged about their German version and if you know the books at all, it’s absolutely fascinating to read about how they are the same, yet very different!
These three, the last of my individual paperbacks and the original Three Investigator Series books I’ve got (I am still missing a few, listed at the bottom of my Wishlist), were again acquired in November 2012 in a big charity shop purchase, not recorded on the blog apart from in a TBR photo from December 2012 that doesn’t include them! They definitely fall into my 2024 TBR project.
M. V. Carey – “The Mystery of the Scar-Faced Beggar” (#31)
(22 November 2012, charity shop)
Bob witnesses a strange event with a beggar with a scar on his face who drops an expensive wallet. It turns out this belongs to Hector Sebastian, an ex-private detective turned best-selling author (who introduces this book and the next ones, after it is revealed that Alfred Hitchcock has died; this works as he died in 1980 and this book was published in 1981) and we’re then launched into an exciting world of bank robbers and the militant wing of an organisation trying to regain power in a small, fictitious, South American country. Maybe because it’s by M.V. Carey, there’s an understanding of culture and colony which is not always evident: the American characters who do not speak Spanish feel bad about it and there’s a good explanation of the country’s past: “The landowners … the ones who had thrown out the Spanish governor, they’d become corrupt. They got rich on the labour of the poor people and didn’t give anything in return. Most of the poor people were descended from the Indians who had owned the country in the first place, but the landowners didn’t think they were important” (p. 77). Also definitely because it’s an M.V. Carey book, she can’t do much about the Three Investigators being boys but Aunt Martha holds the power at home and there’s a very badass woman boatyard owner and speedboat driver who has a powerful role near the end, and her mother is one of the few people in the series who has an actual special psychic gift. So, a good one!
William Arden – “The Mystery of the Purple Pirate” (#33)
(22 November 2012, charity shop)
In what turns out to be a rather convoluted plot, the boys are tempted to a session recording people’s knowledge about local pirates and brigands, reeling off several of the ones they encountered or heard about in other books (I always like that aspect of long series!). They end up at a rather pathetic pirate adventure park complete with cardboard pirates and a child and a man leaping around taking lots of different roles on shore. But the descendent of the actual purple pirate is still around, too, in his special circular castle, and he has a plan. Trap doors, secret tunnels and the like abound and it’s very difficult to know who to trust. It’s interesting to realise the series has pretty well completely come away from the illusions and seeming magic that were a feature of the earlier books.
Marc Brandel – “The Mystery of the Kidnapped Whale”
(22 November 2012, charity shop)
The first Marc Brandel Three Investigators book I’ve read (I think) and the first of only four he contributed. You can tell it’s a different writer because he includes a lot more emotion than the others; this is a story about a whale which gets beached and then used to hunt for a sunken ship (of course it is!) but the whale is given almost human reactions and does a lot more than a whale could probably be hastily trained to do, and Pete thinks about the “little whale” who he just wants to see back in the ocean and free. There is a strong woman character, Constance, however she’s always clad in a swimming costume, which isn’t something Carey would probably do. She is strong and powerful and skilled, though, at least. This one also includes a character from a previous story, Pancho, who I don’t recall them saving from being accused of stealing from a garage he worked for (I have had gaps in this set of reading so might have encountered him before). He has the handy attribute of being Mexican American which helps with the plot. This book is notable for having Hector Sebastian comment that he’s writing his introduction on “my new word processor. That’s a computer with a typewriter keyboard and a memory to store what I write”!
These were the last of my original Three Investigators mysteries on my TBR but I do have two two-book Crimebuster volumes.
These were Books 108-110 in my 2024 TBR project, 31 to go!
I came to Kit de Waal’s work a bit later than I perhaps should have: I convinced myself that I wouldn’t be able to cope with her novel “My Name is Leon” but then went to an event at the Bookshop celebrating the launch of her memoir, “Without Warning and Only Sometimes” and ended up buying “Leon” there and, of course, reading and loving it. Those were both read in 2023 and I was thrilled to see her new novel, “The Best of Everything”, pop up on NetGalley and even more thrilled when I was approved to read it. I’m not sure which day I received it as I had to re-download it when the first download didn’t work, so I’m glad I record my incomings and know what month it was, at least.
Kit de Waal – The Best of Everything”
(January 2025, NetGalley)
This is not a Maggie Paulette has ever seen before, with the voice of a girl, no joking in it whatsoever, the Irish accent so strong that Paulette realizes that Maggie must temper it every day, square off the edges and say English words the way the English say them, just like Paulette does, tucking her tongue up nice and neat so people can understand her.
Paulette only allows herself to dream sometimes, and a poignant early moment has her in a shop, stroking a beautiful cot that turns into a bed and letting the assistant think she, too, is pregnant. But one day, her lover, Denton doesn’t come back and it’s his best friend Garfield who works his way into her life and her bed as they both grieve.
When baby Bird comes along, her life is complete (in fact, she doesn’t need Garfield: whether his “revenge” starts at that point is debatable, with our unreliable narrator thinking so when her life dips badly). She’s determined to raise him good, clever and kind, but why does her mind keep running in two directions: back to St Kitts, where she was raised and across the estate to Cornelius, a deprived-looking child living with the very man who took Denton away from her life.
So in comes Nellie into their lives, and his grandfather, Shirt-and-Tie, and all seems well for a while in this odd little found family until the boys grow and the contrast between attitudes towards a a good Black boy and a tearaway White boy mean that Bird starts to get the blame for Nellie’s misdemeanors.
With only her Irish single mum next door neighbour, Maggie, for company in the first place, when that relationship founders on some home truths said meanly, and Garfield extracts his “revenge”, it’s only to be expected that Paulette starts to dip and founder herself, even her beloved job as an auxilliary nurse threatened. Will Paulette manage to turn herself around in time to salvage her job and maybe a new future? Will Bird come back and will Nellie turn from the path he seemed set on?
Small acts of kindness light the way and you have to hope things will come out right. Kit de Waal is of course the master of all this, manipulating plot, characters and readers expertly, always in control, always warm and reminding us of those acts of kindness we choose to do. The book is suffused with Birmingham as well as St Kitts / Caribbean phrasing and references (I love that Mrs Parchment, who Paulette and her grandmother stay with in Small Heath when they first arrive in the UK, has no first name, reminding me of our old neighbour of about 13 years, Mr Jackson, no first name in all that time), which makes it even more special and engaging to local readers.
Superb and highly recommended.
Thank you to Tinder Press for approving me to read this novel in return for an honest review. “The Best of Everything” was published on 10 April 2025.
Adventures in reading, running and working from home 
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